Agreed, what a waste. Lets face it, the government does not know how to run a business. If the government was a business it would of closed a long time ago. This HSR is like the pension system they use, keeps on ballooning exponentially every year.

The only think about HSR that is a "waste" is this particular project's management and planning. The Europeans and the Chinese are building HSR at lightning speed, and spending a tiny fraction of what we're spending. What's the difference? A national culture that support public transport without every NIMBY starting a lawsuit, governmental experience in building and administering it, and of course, more experience in general. I'm sure their first projects were a tough sell and expensive. So why not leverage their experience and have them build it for us? Based on some budgeting reports from Germany, our system should cost close to the original budget.

Posted by Old Ben
a resident of Shoreline West
on Dec 7, 2011 at 12:02 pm

Apples and oranges. The Europeans and the Chinese don't have the level of corruption we have here. This thing has been a scam from the very start. The taxpayers should get a full refund of every penny spent.

Vote Every friggen elected official out, again and again until we get honest WORKING folks in office that have run a business. No More "Career" politicians.. They are virtually ALL only thinking of brass tablets and public acclaim and the next election results... Send them all back to real work. From City Council to the White House. How many payrolls have any of them met ?
Dump the tracks to nowhere.

"The Europeans and the Chinese are building HSR at lightning speed, and spending a tiny fraction of what we're spending. What's the difference?"

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The differences abound.

1. China, has an abundance of cash, and is desperately trying to find ways to spend it or invest it. As a side note, notice the safety and quality flaws they are experiencing now with their system. California is currently in the red, with no prospects of that changing in the near or long term.

2. European countries are tiny in comparison to the distances that would need to be covered in the US, even in California.

3. European countries do not have a car-centric culture, to the degree that the US has, which has influenced public policy and planning. Relatively speaking, gas is still really cheap here.

4. Having China or any other foreign entity build the HSR for us would not substantially lower costs (material costs, right of way acquisition), and would also route many needed dollars out of the state's economy into a foreign country. Let's remember that one of the benefits of large public projects is that they stimulate the local economy, by injecting dollars.

As you can see, the solution to the problems we're facing with transportation are not so one dimensional that simply spending a bunch of money to lay down tracks across the state will fix it.